Deer can be seen below the tree line on property off Victoria
Lake Road near Highway 385 on at dusk, Oct. 18, 2011. South Dakota
Game, Fish & Parks employees were scattered around the Black
Hills on Tuesday evening to record deer sightings as part of a
pilot project that will help the organization estimate the deer
population. (Kristina Barker/Journal staff)

Hunters worry about lions' impact in Hills

South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks resource biologist Lauren
Dahl, left, and regional wildlife manager John Kanta record their
coordinates while spotting deer along Victoria Lake Road near
Highway 385 on Tuesday evening, Oct. 18, 2011. The survey is part
of a pilot project that will help Game, Fish & Parks estimate
the deer population. (Kristina Barker/Journal staff)

Deer can be seen below the tree line on property off Victoria
Lake Road near Highway 385 on at dusk, Oct. 18, 2011. South Dakota
Game, Fish & Parks employees were scattered around the Black
Hills on Tuesday evening to record deer sightings as part of a
pilot project that will help the organization estimate the deer
population. (Kristina Barker/Journal staff)

When the firing is finished for 2011 in the Black Hills, sport
hunters will have killed about 3,000 deer.

Mountain lions will have killed 4,000 or more.

That worries sport hunters, who also fret about things like
this:

In an ongoing study of elk calves in Custer State Park, almost
70 percent of the 30 calves fitted with radio collars this spring
are already believed to have been killed by lions.

One study doesn't necessarily represent the lion kill on elk
calves throughout the Black Hills, but it shows on a limited level
the kind of lion carnage that some hunters fear is taking place on
a much larger scale.

What's that mean for the future of big-hunting in the Black
Hills? Hunters like Lee DeLange aren't quite sure.

"I'm a little pessimistic about what the coming years will be
and whether my kids will be able to go hunting in the Black Hills,
as I've been able to," said DeLange, a 40-year-old Rapid City
native now living in the country near Nemo with his wife and three
children. "I think we've got a problem with lions."

The state Game, Fish & Parks Commission agrees. That's why
the eight-member citizens board that oversee the GF&P
Department has been upping the allowed lion quota in a season that
killed 13 lions when it first opened in 2005 and could kill up to
70 in 2012.

Hunters like DeLange think that's a wise move by the commission,
which responded to a resounding succession of hunters calling for a
higher lion quota during a recent meeting in Rapid City. The
commission's goal is to trim a lion population that estimated at
about 250 a couple of years ago down to 150 or 160 after next
year's hunt.

DeLange likes the sound of that.

"I think they're headed in the right direction," he said. "If
they're talking about cutting the lion population down to 150, that
sounds about right to me."

But it sounds all wrong to John Wrede of Rapid City, a retired
conservation officer and former game manager who worked for
GF&P for 31 years. Wrede thinks GF&P created many of its
own problems with dwindling elk and deer herds in recent years by
shooting too many doe deer and cow elk.

The agency increased the issuance of "antlerless" deer tags to
reduce a deer herd that had exploded in many areas. GF&P took a
similar approach to cutting the expanded elk herd, by increasing
the number of cow tags available to hunters.

Wrede thinks GF&P leaders and the commission bowed to
pressure from politicians and a small number of landowners
complaining about damage to crops and fences and feed supplies from
deer and particularly elk.

It was a simplistic over-response to a complicated wildlife
management problem, Wrede said. It additional pressure on deer and
elk herds already stressed by year-round human disturbance and
questionable forest management and grazing practices that have
diminished the big-game habitat base, he said.

"The Black Hills essentially are the most heavily logged,
heavily roaded piece of public land in the United States," Wrede
said. "The animals simply don't have the kind of security they used
to have. We're creating a lot of our own problems."

Blaming the lion is the easy way out, Wrede said. And he fears
that lions will suffer the same kind of population overkill endured
by deer and elk when "we shot the living daylights out of
them."

"Increasing the lion permits isn't going to help speed up the
recovery of elk and deer at all," Wrede said. "We're simply abusing
one wildlife population to try to recover another."

Wrede isn't shy about making his argument to GF&P officials.
They include regional wildlife manager John Kanta of Rapid City,
whose job Wrede once held. Kanta understands Wrede's concerns, just
as he sympathizes with DeLange's worries about the shrinking deer
and elk herds and the effects of lions.

Both arguments have merit but don't tell the whole story, Kanta
said. Nor is the decline in deer and elk numbers as catastrophic as
some might believe, he said.

‘Are the numbers down? Absolutely. You can drive the highways
and see that," Kanta said. "But it's not accurate or fair to say
the elk are gone and there's no deer out there and everything
stinks."

Kanta agrees with Wrede that wildlife management is complicated.
And the GF&P commission and its technical staff have been
trying to respond to landowner complaints, provide optimal hunting
opportunities to the public and find a stable range for the elk and
deer herds, he said.

The elk herd has dropped farther than managers desired in many
areas, from an overall high of around 6,600 in 2004 to about 4,000
before the season last year.

It's likely to be lower this year. The deer herd has been
dropping as well, a fact reflected in the overall harvest in the
Black Hills for all types of hunting - regular rifle, muzzleloader,
archery and youth seasons included. The total deer kill by sport
hunters was 7,800 in 2007. That hunter kill dropped to 5,500 in
2009, a point at which Kanta figured lions and sport hunters were
killing about the same number of deer in the hills.

That thought aggravated some hunters and enraged others, some of
whom showed up at the GF&P Commission earlier this month when
commissioners set the highest lion kill quota in the season's short
history.

Kanta figured the lion kill for the year based on a formula of
how many lions are in the hills and how many deer each would
typically kill in a year. And he points out that because the lion
population remained essentially the same, hunters were likely
killing deer more than lions when the deer population was higher
and more permits were issued, such as in 2007.

There' no doubt, though, that lions take their share.

"Lions were basically built to kill deer. That's what they
evolved with," Kanta said. "They're most efficient at killing deer,
so that's what they're going to target - deer or deer-sized
animals."

Lions can kill adult elk but are more likely to kill elk calves.
That's particularly true with the very young and vulnerable calves
are in the first week after birth.

DeLange believes he has seen the impacts of lions on the elk
herd that had lived around Nemo. He has seen eight lions since he
and his family moved to the Nemo area in 2003. He has also watched
an elk herd in that area virtually disappear.

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"You see more lions and you see fewer elk, and hardly see any
calves, to me there's a pretty obvious connection," he said.

He also understands that hunters had an impact, and sometimes
elk move out of a given area. But lions are still his biggest,
long-term concern.

The elk were down so far in the Nemo area this year that DeLange
put in for an elk license in another unit. And he managed to bag a
nice elk bull hunting near O'Neill Pass. But he worries about the
elk that seem to be missing near his home.

"I guess I saw about 40 elk in the five days I hunted," he said.
"I used to see 40 elk going to work in the morning down Vanocker
Canyon."

Mike Jarding has watched the same kind of decline in both elk
and deer in the southern hills. He manages a ranch near Minnekahta
Junction west of Hot Springs, and shares DeLange's worries about
the future of Black Hills hunting.

"My biggest concern is these young hunters coming up," Jarding
said. "If they go out a hunt for four days and don't see a deer or
elk, it'll be hard to get them to try it again."

Like Delange, Jarding supports the higher lion quota, along with
reduced hunting licenses for a time.

"How I see it is Game, Fish & Parks put out too many tags
because they were trying to reduce the herd. And now the older elk
are being killed off by hunters and we don't have the young ones
coming up, because of lions," Jarding said. "If we don't do
something, the hunters will harvest all the older elk and we'll be
out."

Kanta said he is confident that elk won't disappear from the
Black Hills. But rebuilding the herd might take some time,
especially if it's done in a way that's more palatable to
landowners and beneficial to hunters and elk long term, he
said.

"We can get back to those number of 5,000 to 6,000 elk and
that's my goal here in the Black Hills," Kanta said. "But I don't
want to get back to that situation we had in 2003, with private
landowners suffering damage from high elk density."

Kanta likes a management scheme that adds elk overall but
focuses growth on areas of mostly public land where the big animals
won't cause problems. Meanwhile, the GF&P Commission has cut
way back on deer and elk permits and boosted the lion quota.

It's a combination Kanta believes will work, as the Black Hills
region adjusts to a higher lion population that seems here to
stay.

"Certainly, the increase in the lion population was a new
effect, because that was a new mortality we hadn't dealt with to
this degree in recent history," Kanta said. "But hunter harvest,
particularly on elk, is still the major mortality."

And it will be again with deer, when that population rebuilds
itself and lion numbers are reduced, he said.

Meanwhile, the big cats have the predatory edge in killing an
animal they evolved to eat.